Overview

In today’s digital-first educational landscape, creating engaging and effective online learning experiences is essential. This course teaches learner-centered design principles that shape clear, inclusive, and impactful digital instruction—skills highly sought after in education, training, and edtech industries. You’ll learn how to apply cognitive learning principles, structure content for multiple formats (text, video, webinar), and adapt digital instruction to meet diverse learner needs. Whether you're designing new courses or improving existing ones, this course empowers you to create meaningful and measurable learning experiences. What sets this course apart is its practical, real-world approach to digital learning design. You’ll explore not just the "why" behind learning theories, but also the "how" of applying them in real teaching scenarios, with tools to evaluate success. This course is ideal for educators, instructional designers, content developers, and learning experience professionals. While prior experience in creating or delivering educational content is helpful, no technical background is required. Copyright © 2023 Jenae Cohn and Michael Greer. All rights reserved. Originally published by Rosenfeld Media, LLC. This course edition is published by Packt Publishing under license from Rosenfeld Media LLC. No part of this material may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means—electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise—without prior written permission from the author or the publisher.

Syllabus

Learning Is an Experience

In this section, we will explore online learning's evolution, convert historical milestones into learner-centered design strategies, and apply three-dimensional analysis of skills, motivation, and context to build transparent, engaging experiences.

Learning About Your Learners

In this section, we will map learner personas using design thinking, design targeted surveys capturing demographics, motivations, and expectations, and employ focus groups to validate assumptions, ensuring data-driven, learner-aligned content.

Setting the Foundation

In this section, we will discover how to uncover learner challenges, set clear endpoints, write motivating goals, and craft navigational landmarks that keep online participants focused and progressing.

Building a Space for Online Learning

In this section, we will design learner-centered virtual spaces by aligning tasks with purpose, media and modality, and critically integrating immersive technologies to enhance agency, engagement, and educational outcomes.

Designing Texts

In this section, we will design learner-focused instructional texts by linking content to learner intentions, using plain language, chunking information, and applying repetition and layout techniques to reinforce comprehension and retention.

Planning Videos

In this section, we will explore designing concise, context-aware instructional videos, aligning them with course rhythm, and deciding when video surpasses other media to sustain learner engagement and streamline production.

Producing Videos

In this section, we will map a complete video production workflow, compare slideware, drag-and-drop and consumer editors, and integrate narration, music, captions and descriptions to create polished, accessible content.

Facilitating Live Webinar Presentations

In this section, we will design outcome focused webinar plans, integrate polls, chat, and question and answer segments, then analyze engagement data to iteratively refine and energize future live sessions.

Building Connections Among Learners

In this section, we strengthen online social presence by designing welcoming meet-and-greet spaces and periodic check-ins, then analyze learner feedback to adapt community support responsively, sustaining engagement and deeper cognition.

Giving Your Learners Feedback

In this section, we will design low-stakes assessments that deliver automated feedback and analyze quiz analytics to improve support. Learners track mastery with less stress while instructors scale assistance efficiently.

Reviewing Your Learning Experience

In this section, we will design feedback surveys, mine platform data, and turn learner reflections into evidence-based review memos that guide iterative, learner-centered course improvements.